Do Your Part

tracking our carbon footprint

Do Your Part unites the efforts of individuals around the country to address global warming. Our interactive mapping feature lets you join your local community effort and efforts of groups around the country. Our carbon calculator provides the tools you need to understand your current carbon footprint and then set goals to reduce your impact. Our tracking tool displays progress in real time towards individual and community goals. Do Your Part is a great way to get involved in the effort to stop global warming.

Explore

Explore the impact that people around the country are making by reducing their carbon footprints. Search for communities and groups by zip code, key word or browse by category. See each community’s goal and their progress towards it displayed via our footprint tracker.

Calculate

Measure your carbon footprint and set your goals using our advanced calculator developed by ICF International for the US Environmental Protection Agency. Our calculator is region specific based on your zip code.

Join

Create a basic profile that joins your efforts with others around the country. If you are not already a member, just click join and create a user name and password. Once you have joined, your pledges will then be counted towards local and national Do Your Part! goals. You will then have full access to the site and will be able to join groups, create groups, update your profile, save data in the calculator for later and much more to come.

Setting Goals

Do Your Part! is fundamentally a goal-based program. By setting goals and demonstrating tangible progress towards those goals, Do Your Part! shows that global warming is an issue that can be addressed.

Goals are automatically generated based upon the following standard set of criteria:

• The number of people in a given community
• Average per capita carbon footprint
• A 10 percent reduction in emissions per person per year (default)
• A 10 percent participation rate (default)
• Day of the year that the goal is set. (Goals will be multiplied by the percentage of the year that is outstanding to account for the time remaining to reach the goal that year)

While the process for setting an emission reduction goal is set, a community can choose to change 1) The percentage reduction in emissions per participant 2) The percentage of the number of people in a given community that will participate. Note: we expect the participation rate to grow per year.

Double Counting

In order to avoid double counting, you can only belong to one geographic community, automatically defined by your zip code. Each community’s goals and pledges are rolled up to the national level.

Background

Do Your Part! was developed as an expansion of the EPA’s Household Emissions Calculator. Built over the past 5 years, EPA’s Household Emissions Calculator represents a well researched and respected personal carbon footprint tool that is held to the highest international methodologies.

Calculator Assumptions

For an explanation of the assumptions and sources used by the Do Your Part! calculator, click here. Keep in mind that average per person emissions estimates or per capita emissions estimates are usually derived from national estimates of greenhouse gas emissions, which include greenhouse gas emissions from all sources in the U.S., including industrial emissions (emissions from manufacturing of goods and services). As a result, if you compare your estimates from the personal emissions calculator to per capita emissions in the U.S., they may differ significantly.